Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Armed Customers Rewarded: God, Gumbo and Guns

By Douglas V. Gibbs

As places of business like Target and Chipotle continue to ban gun owners from carrying their firearm inside their stores, those that support the right to keep and bear arms believes those locations are becoming targets.  The saying is, "Bad guys with guns are stopped by good guys with guns."  The criminal element, and mentally unstable gunmen, have primarily committed their shootings in "gun-free zones" because they know that is where they will meet no armed opposition.

Since 2009 we have seen a flurry of mass shootings.  The gun control crowd has run around screaming that if guns weren't allowed to be owned by anybody, the shootings would have never happened, when the reality is that the gun control policies of the liberal left has been encouraging shootings.  History, and statistics, disagree with the anti-gun panicked hysteria's nonsensical ravings about the dangers of legally owned guns.  In the United States, since 2009, 92% of mass shootings have occurred in gun-free zones, where a specific prohibition of firearms, or city policy of prohibitions on guns, has been posted.

The answer is an easy one to discover.  Just ask yourself, if you were a criminal, or a shooter, would you whip out your gun at a gun-free zone like Target?  Or would you make yourself a gunman at a gun shop where the employees are armed, and the customers are gun enthusiasts surrounded by firearms and ammo?

You would survive longer at a gun-free zone like Target, a school (be it a high school, elementary school, or university), or a theater in Colorado with a strict gun-free zone policy, because you would have free target practice until the police show up.  At the gun shop you might squeeze off the first shot. . . maybe.

When the Murrieta City Council was listening to public opinion regarding the possibility of bringing an indoor gun range to the city a couple years ago, a woman approached the dais and declared, "If we have a gun range, it will attract the criminal element, crime will go up, and nobody will be safe."

Really?

Common Sense dictates that the last place the criminal element would want to set up shop is at a location where they know the citizens are armed, practice their skill at an indoor gun range, and in a city that is attracting more legal gun owners as a result of the pro-gun environment.

I was reading an article a few years ago where a study determined that if you are flying an American Flag in front of your house, the odds of your home being robbed drops drastically.  The reason?  The criminal element has determined that the likelihood of the home owner being armed goes up when they are flying an American Flag.  Patriotic Americans tend to be gun owners, the crooks have surmised.

So, the shooters prefer gun-free zones, and the criminal element tends to stay away from places that are more likely to have armed citizens in the area.

As a business owner, the answer is obvious.  Welcome armed customers, and encourage them to come to your place of business with discounts for being armed, and you may never be robbed again.

In Louisiana, a restaurant has figured out that having armed citizens on the premises is a good thing, and the gun owners should be rewarded for showing up with their gun with them.

At Bergeron's, if you walk in with a firearm, you get a 10% discount.  Show an employee your gun, and the discount is yours.

The owner, Kevin Cox, calls his restaurant, "The home of God, gumbo, and guns."

"Show it to me out of your purse, out of your back pocket, show it to me," Bergeron's restaurant owner Kevin Cox said. "Show that you have one so if something goes wrong here today I know you're here to protect me."

Since the gun discount began six weeks ago, not only is Cox feeling better protected, but business has increased 25%.  To keep up with the rapid rise in business, he has hired more help (four more employees, so far), and he has added a dinner menu.

"You make a gun-free zone, that's where bad people with guns are going to go -- dumbest thing I've ever heard," Cox said. "So I'm trying to prove that this is the right route to go. Somebody gets robbed every day, not me."

A customer that now eats at Bergeron's three times a week said, "It's not about the money. It's about the freedom of being able to go have some really good food with some really good people and be able to carry your firearm with you."

When speaking to a CBS camera crew, the customer said, "You feel calm, like your cameraman came up behind me a while ago saying, 'I want to take a picture of you from behind, I don't wanna scare you.'  I said, 'You don't scare me, I'm the one that's got the gun.'"

In the United States, 31 States allow adults to carry firearms openly without a permit, as the Founding Fathers intended.

Some customers drive to the restaurant from out of the area.  One such customer said, "It makes me feel like, we're finally standing up as a group of people and saying, 'no, you're not taking our guns.'"

A number of customers refuse the discount, telling the owner to give the money to charity.  They are there for the freedom of carrying their firearm, not the discount.

Bergeron's does not serve alcohol, but they serve plenty of food, more and more with each passing day as business booms.  Business is good, business is safe, and everyone but the gun control crowd is happy.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary


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